January 2002 – My New Method
So what do I do all day? I sit round, listening to Jeff Buckley, Mozart’s Requiem maybe Beethoven, and Abbey Road. Thinking about doing my final year dissertation work but preferring to procrastinate with a Jack Kerouac biography I picked up for a fiver. Thoroughly depressed at the tragic story of his life, thanking god that I’m not blessed/cursed with the same talent. Indulge fantasies of drinking myself into oblivion, most I could manage was that last week of term - drunk four nights on the run. Sing at the top of my voice ‘cause there’s nobody in and next door is empty.
Maybe record a few new ditties with my fancy new microphone I bought with my Christmas money - a dual impedance condenser no less! Had me and my parents in the kitchen recording hand claps last night. Mum kept looking at me mouthing how much longer, my dad leaves halfway trough the song. Then with red raw hands my mum says at the end of the take “I bet you can hear me sighing.” Having been gifted a new aesthetic by David Pajo and his Papa M project whereby one of the songs on his latest album is ostensibly demo quality, with a TV in the background blaring away. I have set out on a project whereby songs are composed and recorded quickly, with perfunctory percussion – a bass drum up ended and struck with a xylophone beater, tambourine, handclaps, wooden floors - and augmentation – maybe a guitar overdub, organ, cars driving past - to whatever instrument it was composed on. Still a few tunes in the old style remain, carefully composed and arranged. Recorded in precise sessions in multiple takes, drums, bass, and many overdubs. That’s where the Kerouac influence feeds in again, first take best take, first thought best thought, spontaneous composition?! I’m discovering the joy of simply improvising small songs on the acoustic guitar except instead of expanding them into full compositions they remain as they are. Although David Pajo has started singing I wont venture that far yet, I just cant write a lyric I’m happy with - see? I can’t tell a lie, and I sure as hell can’t sing one.
Postscipt - March 2004
This album was never released, but some of the recordings made it to Blind Phase. In the end the record was too much like Papa M. I was going though a very self conscious period.